"Life isn't about finding yourself, it is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

That is one of my favorite quotes and one of the truest things ever said. To find yourself means you are just the sum of the extraneous events on your life. You are not "you" but you are determined by forces outside of your control. While determinism may be theoretically true (and that is outside the scope of this blog) I do not feel that is a sound way to live a life worth living.

I saw the following infographic on reddit:



I definitely don't feel like I am "in my prime" since I continuously feel like next year is going to be better; that I can be better tomorrow than I am today. However, I am fast approaching "middle age" and I know that at some point I will objectively be in my prime and past my prime. The purpose of this blog is to serve as a written journey of me creating myself into something better than what I currently am so that when I look back at the end of my life I leave no doubt that I did as much as I could with what I have. This is about my attempt to transcend the circumstances of my life, which in many way determined the first 20+ years of my life, and become something better (the concept of the overman) than what I currently am.



Here is synopsis of where I am at:

• I am 30 years old and in decent physical shape.
• I live with my girlfriend in an apartment.
• I am a winning poker player but after completing my PGC I find myself spewing since I have a large cash cushion.
• I have student loan debt and still have a loan out for my car.
• I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and can sit for my PE license this spring.
• I haven't read a book (although I listen to quite a few books on tape) for several months.
• I have been "working" on a novel for some time but most of it is thinking about it, working on the outline, and I have very few pages down.
• I have not done any extensive traveling in the USA or abroad.

In 5 years I will be 35 and my goal is to use this blog as a tool to achieve a series of goals that will be set both at the beginning, and during the duration, of this blog during that time frame. I resigned from my previous job last month and begin my new position as a consulting engineer tomorrow (September 8th, 2014). I'm also expecting to do a lot of introspection about the direction I'm taking and where I want to be.

By 31 I want to:

• Purchase several books and read them.
• Crush my new job and really advance my career.
• Pay off my car.
• Reach my goal weight of 175 pounds.
• Completely cut my spewing in NLHE.

By 32 I want to:

• Have my professional engineering license.
• Play in a WSOP event.
• Reach a point where I can be considered to be a very good computer programmer.

By 33 I want to:

• Visit Europe.

By 34 I want to:

• Join the 1,000 lbs club (combined 1,000 bench/DL/squat)
• Have all the professional certifications I can have for my field.

By 35 I want to:

• Start a family.
• Purchase a home.

Some of these will occur sooner than others. I am currently splitting time between two offices and when my girlfriend graduates I'd like to buy a home near the main office (city 30 miles away) so I don't know if I can really take advantage of the low interest rates/prices now.

As part of my spew elimination I am going to keep a running total of all the money I spew off in cash games as my "Spewmanity Sum". I am also going to list a % of days I should be working out versus days I didn't.

Anyway, time to watch some football and hit the gym later. This isn't the most popular sub forum but I hope this gets some views and I expect this to be a really good long term journey.

Spewmanity Sum: $1,000
Lazy Ratio: DNE

Entry #1

I have been crushing work, and doing acceptable in my personal life. I have, however, not gone to the gym yet. This is a huge failure and one I will address tomorrow. As my schedule has changed I knew there would be disruption as it settles. There is definitely going to be a lot of stress on my girlfriend and my dog. However, I think this will subside.

I also played pretty well on Tuesday. I am going to play again on Friday. Then I likely will not play again until next Friday due to my trip to New York.

Can't really give a huge update since I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff done, but updating this blog was part of my To Do list. So here it is!

If you are reading this: I promise my next update will be better and the update after NYC should be good.

Entry #2

Tomorrow is game day and I am looking forward to the game. I will not be attending since I sold my tickets to my brother but I will be tail gating. This is definitely a pretty big component of having a good life style.

However my major goal is to clean up my apartment and to hit the gym. This last week I was in NYC and while I walked a very significant amount in the course of my engineering duties and never went to the gym. I balanced this out with going out drinking every night. This is untenable.

I really need to step it up, not only to get to my goals, but to set a better example for my girlfriend. Our current diet really doesn't affect me, but it causes her to yo-yo. If I want something to change, I need to lead the charge.

My project in NYC was incredibly sick. I feel like my career is about to make some major steps forward in the next few years. I was able to take a bunch of pretty sick pictures which are blow. I also created this album.













My goal is to update this a little more consistently and to write a bit more comprehensively. However, time is short and it is getting late. Hope you guys like the pictures and have a great weekend.

Entry 3

Quitting before I finish my lifts. Leaving 10 minutes early. Drinking a beer at the table. All of these are a sign of one thing: weakness.

I am weak. Currently I am in the worse downswing of my "poker career". At first it was funny, not it is infuriating. One thing has become clear: I am not that good, smart, or dedicated. The veil of superiority that I so often let drift before my eyes has once again been lifted. The skewed perspective, the imagined greatness, the wannabe "coolness" is gone. The murk has settled and the water is as clear as a cold winter morning; I have seen the bottom and have no place to go but up.

Never. Never have I been good. Never have I been better. The truth is: I struggle at mediocrity.

There was a time where I thought I turned a corner; where I thought I had finally achieved a level of excellence that I could be proud of. The truth is that my poor performance was just masked by an incredible run of luck.

There is one answer: hard work. Hard work. Hard work.

At my job there are several people who just sit around and joke. **** them, I'm working. At the table there are people who just sit around and drink. **** them, I'm working. At the gym there are people who just sit around and talk ****. **** them, I'm working.

This doesn't mean I'll be rude. This doesn't mean I'm going to be mean spirited. It just means that I'm putting myself first. My goals. My dreams. My aspirations. There is only one way I can get there: hard work.

Today, tomorrow, the next day, and the day after.

This does not mean I can't live the beautiful life. I'm drinking a good bottle of Pinot Noir right now, but writing this is important.

Next battle: laundry and dishes. Game time.

Entry #4

Do you dream about escaping your life? Or even changing it? To change oneself is in many ways to kill who we are. As the we strip the pieces of who we were and replace it with the pieces of who we wish to become the person you were ceases to be. Who you were is killed by work; and the new person is built piece by piece. This is accomplished normally by age and wisdom, like time eroding away the excess of youth; but it can also be done from within like an animal breaking through the egg shell and being born into this world.

But there is a difference between the desire to change who you are, which is born out of either depression or a moment of clarity, and wanting to advance who you are. To dream of expanding your life from the borders that now confine it to new territories you do not currently occupy. To dream of advancing your life from one position, not as a career position, but instead to a new place you have not been.

There are many things I have been failing at, but there are many I have been succeeding at. Tardiness is dead, and who I was (somebody who was 5 minutes late to work) no longer exists. However, I have failed in some personal relationships at my current place of work. These will be resolved.

There are pieces of me that still must be replaced but I do not think the rest of my journey will fundamentally change who I am more than the normal progression of life.

But all I can do is work hard each and every day and march forward to where I want to be instead of worrying how long it has taken me to get to where I am.

first.

GL OP. I really enjoyed your PGC when it was active, as it had some of the best strategy advice available in LLSNL. Good to see that you have what many poker players lack: perspective and balance. I look forward to following!

Subb'd

Wow eleventy I never knew you were so deep man.

Entry #5

I have been doing well in work in many respects but I have definitely been getting caught up in office chatter. I always have a hard time balancing a lot of these topics because on one hand, you need to be a member of "the group" to function properly but on the other hand you need to separate yourself from the chatter to excel. I have definitely been doing well in the work/gym/poker trifecta which is where I have been focused on. Relationship wise it is another story. My girlfriend is awesome, I love her, and I want everything to work out. However, she just has been regressing diet wise and I just don't know if we are ever going to escape this downward spiral we have been in where I am putting pressure on her to lose weight when she might not even want to. But time is a flat circle and everything repeats.

When we first started dating I was in a much different place financially than I am now. I was fine not going out and being a home body. However, my desire has always been to travel, to see the world, to go out and live a fulfilling life. It feels at times that she just wants to live a simple life at home and our future together is the easy path where I'm going to look back and have nothing but a bunch of "what could have been" feelings.

This all coincides with the introduction of some new temptation in my life. A very intelligent, drop dead gorgeous, available and actively looking new employee started. We had a social hour with an architecture firm and hit it off incredibly well. The issue isn't that I'm interested in her, the issue is that it makes me realize what else is out there.

If my girlfriend ever read this I want her to know this: you are the best thing that has ever been in my life, I just want to make sure we are the best thing going forward. These issues have been going on for literally years and in many ways they stem from the beginning of our relationship. I'm terrible at endings though and I have no idea what an ending would do to her.

Thanks for the subs by the way!

Entry #6

Life has been going very well. My relationship has really turned itself around for the better in the past several weeks, I went on a sick heater in Vegas (which was posted in a TR blog), and work has been going well. Furthermore, I have begun reading The Red Pill on reddit, mainly just for something to read, and it has gotten me thinking about a lot of **** regarding who I am and where I am in my life.

For those who don't know I'll give a brief rundown from Wikipedia:
The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are popular culture symbols representing the choice between embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red pill) and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill).
The terms, popularized in science fiction culture, are derived from the 1999 film The Matrix. In the movie, the main character Neo is offered the choice between a red pill and a blue pill. The blue pill would allow him to remain in the fabricated reality of the Matrix, therefore living the "ignorance of illusion", while the red pill would lead to his escape from the Matrix and into the real world, therefore living the "truth of reality" even though it is a harsher, more difficult life.

I think I'm going to refocus this into a kind of analysis of this culture which I feel fits in with the scope and purpose of the blog.

The red pill culture currently focuses on realizing that a lot of things we are told about women are not factually accurate and that by being an alpha (highly desirable man) one can break free from being a beta (submissive and not top tier) and get women.

Considering that I am in a relationship I am not too concerned with picking up women but I am certainly concerned with working on who I am and working on incorporating an overarching philosophy into my life that will allow me to become who I want to be.

Most red pill theory focuses on one thing: being socially alpha. The primary topic is how being socially alpha allows you to get women.

However I would argue that there are several disconnected phases of life where people exhibit different types of behaviors (alpha, beta) dependent upon their level of status. This include, but are not limited to:

* Socially Alpha
*
* This is the primary topic of the manosphere which focuses on deconstructing the relationships between men and women and realizing how a man can change his actions and improve his quality of life with respect to his interaction with women.



* Culturally Alpha
*
* Culturally alpha represents not just the influence you have on people who you have direct contact with, but your ability to influence those you have no direct contact with. Abstractions on culturally alpha would focus on deconstructing cultural interactions and how somebody becomes more influential in the broader flux of society.



* Professionally Alpha
*
* Professionally alpha represents your status within your work environment. This is different from culturally alpha in the sense that somebody could be professionally alpha (lets say a top tier scientist) but not be culturally alpha (Neil DeGrasse Tyson) and is likely not socially alpha.


All three of these categories rely on the concept of frame control (controlling how people perceive you) and understanding of market value (how much you are worth). I would change the standard "Sexual Market Value" to being "Social Market Value" because I think women want to sleep with men of high social market value but an older woman who is looking to settle down will be willing to settle for marriage with a man who is culturally or professionally alpha. They might even prefer to marry a man who is culturally alpha or professionally alpha.

Furthermore, I believe the concept of alpha/beta is pretty incomplete and it should best be described as alpha/beta/gamma/omega which fully captures the multi tiered structure of social interactions.

It is going to take some time for me to fully hash out a lot of these ideas but in the mean time I'm going to focus on one thing: frame control.

Frame control in the work place is definitely an area I have struggled in. I need to be more conscience of my actions/reactions and determine how I want to be perceived and put it into action. We had a holiday party this last weekend and where I work definitely has a drinking culture. During the party I had a bizarre concoction of drinks provided by the mixologist they hired (beer -> martini -> old fashion -> beer -> scotch) and I got an upset stomach/the hiccups and left. I didn't get drunk/out of control and I didn't puke but I definitely got a bunch of **** from my co workers today. This is extremely poor frame control. However, I did succeed in pointing out that several people were much more intoxicated, and that the primary instigator of trash talking (guy who gave me a ride) was a notorious over exaggerator and was able to mitigate the damage.

However, even allowing this to happen is a huge mistake on my part.